Why is study in the arts so invaluable? What kinds of principles can be learned through the arts that are not easily communicated elsewhere? Here are some important reasons that students of all ages should be regularly exposed to the arts at school, from Stanford University professor Elliot W. Eisner.
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teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum, in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail. Students in the arts are taught to make informed, sound judgments
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teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.
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celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.
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make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
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teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.
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teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.
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help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capabilities to find the words that will do the job.
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enable us to have experiences we can have from no other source and through such experiences to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.
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in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
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